2020 Shattered the Myth of American Exceptionalism

Throughout history various nations and their populations have viewed themselves as exceptional and superior to other nations: e.g., the Persian empire, ancient Athens at the height of the Delian League, the Roman Republic, France under Louis XIV and Napoleon, Tsarist Russia, the British Empire at the turn of the 20th century - the list goes on.  All ultimately lost their dominance either from defeat in war, internal strife and revolution, or a failure to see shortcomings that ultimately eroded national strength and unity.  Like nations before it, America and far too many Americans have drunk the myth of American exceptionalism and those on the right now threaten American democracy.  Unfortunately, this myth too often prevents much needed self-assessment, an honest view of history and needed problem solving.  If there is any positive from the year 2020 it may be that this myth - which can have positive aspects at times - has been shattered, particularly in the face of the nation's spectacular failure in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic. A piece in Politico looks at this phenomenon with a focus on Minnesota, but that state's history and experience parallels that of other states, merely the details vary.  This coming year, Americans need to strive to make the myth reality. Here are article excerpts:

In a non-pandemic year, a combination of vacation and personal commitments would take me to the state [Minnesota] perhaps four or five times in a year. People here are solid, sensible, a bit stoical, emphatically decent — the Minnesota of myth.

As it happens, this year I did don my mask for a daylong work trip to the Minnesota of reality. That’s the state with Derek Chauvin’s knee on George Floyd’s neck. I spent 12 hours on the ground for an interview with Gov. Tim Walz about how he was managing the twin traumas of racial unrest and the coronavirus. Walz, an earnest and amiable fellow who is the first governor in 40 years not to come from the Twin Cities metropolitan area, is trying to lead a once-placid state that now vividly highlights the raw, pus-seeping, I-can’t-stand-you-either sores of the Trump Era.

Before we delve into that reality, let’s linger a bit longer on myth. A myth is not synonymous with fiction. Those loons on the lake, and those nice people I encounter, actually exist. A myth is more like a distillation of reality, with the uncomfortable and unattractive parts filtered out. This leaves the pleasing and affirming parts in pure form, to lodge deeply in imagination and memory.

Most people, in my experience, hold close some mythical destination that is similar to what Minnesota is to me. . . . . This is about the crossroads of physical place with internal values, where it is possible to conceive and experience some better version of ourselves.

The great national story of 2020, wherever one lives, was the collision of myth and reality. The American mythology is of an exceptional leader among nations. This year’s reality was exceptionalism of the wrong kind, leading in absolute terms in coronavirus infections and deaths, and with a deplorable record even in relative terms as a percent of population. Our shared story, taught to children and commonly embraced by adults, is that we are on the surface a nation of ornery individualists but underneath are the kind of people who put differences aside and pull together when it really matters. Hmm ... Do you think so?

This points to what one hopes will be the great story of 2021. That is to prove that our national myths, while plainly not fully real, are at least not fully fraudulent. How does a country recover from lost innocence? A good place to start is to recall that innocence was never really there to be lost.

It is on this point that Minnesota is a fine case study. This is true in part because — unlike many Southern states, which were stained from the start by slavery — it is not immediately obvious that this Northern state, with a reputation for Scandinavian-influenced progressivism and civic virtue, might have historic stains of its own.

In 1973, Time Magazine immortalized the state’s romantic conception of itself with a cover that proclaimed, “The Good Life in Minnesota.” It featured the ruddy-faced Democratic governor, Wendell Anderson, in a flannel shirt, holding a freshly caught northern pike. Time’s writer declared, “Some of the nation's more agreeable qualities are evident there: courtesy and fairness, honesty, a capacity for innovation, hard work, intellectual adventure and responsibility.”

How does one go from this version of Minnesota to the version of 2020, when Floyd’s killing on May 25 produced spasms of protests and rioting that left large swaths of Minneapolis boarded up for months after? The answer is with far more continuity in the threads of history than one might suppose.

The state, like most places in the United States, was built in part on a foundation of violence and racial animus. My cousins grew up in the small southern Minnesota town of Mankato — where in 1862, the federal government carried out the largest single-day mass execution in American history. The hangings of 38 Native Americans were approved by none other than President Abraham Lincoln, as part of the conflict between the U.S. Army and the Dakota tribe in the state, then four years into statehood.

In Northfield, the town celebrates its brave 1876 defeat of the Jesse James Gang with a campy festival and reenactment. But as my college classmate, historian T.J. Stiles, illuminated in an acclaimed biography of James, the story of the James-Younger gang shouldn’t be understood through a prism of Old West romanticism. Though sometimes sentimentalized as a plucky American Robin Hood, James was motivated not just by greed but also by racial hatred and fury over the North’s victory in the Civil War.

Nor would the Minnesotans who engaged in, or helped suppress, violent labor unrest in Minneapolis in the 1930s, or racial unrest in the 1960s. These people may not have recognized Donald Trump as a political type— his personality is a product of modern media — but they would not have been shocked by what now is called “polarization,” or the reality of pervasive malice, identity politics or contempt for the established order that now often defines public life.

There are times, as in 2020, when events shine a glaring light on the gap between professed ideals and life as it is really lived. One response to this exposure is to conclude that the ideals were always a fraud and the mythologies that sustained them are a part of the problem. Another response is to accept paradox as part of our national character, and try anew to narrow the gap between aspiration and achievement. In Minnesota, as in America, myths can serve a useful purpose.